Lors de la prise du pouvoir par le régime nazi en janvier 1933, la photographie joue déjà, en Allemagne, un rôle de premier plan dans les médias de masse, tant dans l'information que la publicité. En l'utilisant pour mener sa propagande, le régime montre qu'il la croit capable de transformer le réel, puisqu'il attend d'elle des effets immédiats sur le peuple. C'est à ce pouvoir d'influence que s'intéresse ce mémoire, autant dans les enjeux théoriques qui lui sont sous-jacents que dans les mécanismes concrets utilisés pour le mettre en œuvre, à partir de l'exemple particulier d'un album de propagande photographique nazie. Une revue de la littérature permet d'abord d'assurer la possibilité théorique de la transformation du réel par l'image. Les thèses de différents auteurs permettent de dégager trois moments, non exclusifs et complémentaires, où les images peuvent exercer leur pouvoir d'influence sur un individu : en transformant la manière dont il perçoit le monde, en changeant la manière dont il interprète ces données du réel et en produisant une réalité nouvelle. L'étude de la photographie sous la République de Weimar permet ensuite de comprendre le milieu d'où proviennent les usages que font les nazis du médium. La description des discours d'avant-garde ainsi que des pratiques du photojournalisme et de la publicité montrent que les acteurs de l'époque sont conscients de la capacité de la photographie de transformer le réel. L'analyse d'un album de propagande photographique nazie s'attarde enfin aux mécanismes de persuasion proprement dits, en dégageant des types et des motifs iconographiques liés à des stratégies visuelles. L'observation montre que la propagande nazie, plutôt qu'en rupture, se situe dans la continuité des recherches photographiques en cours sous la démocratie. Le régime nazi, sous cet aspect, participe ainsi avant tout de la modernité technique de son époque. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Photographie, Théorie de la photographie, Photojournalisme, National-socialisme, Propagande nazie, Reichsparteitag.

In the post-Second World War period, the medium of film has been arguably the leading popular culture protagonist of a demonized Adolf Hitler. Between 1968 and 1990, thirty-five English-language films featuring representations of Hitler were released in cinemas, on television, or on home video. In the 1968 to 1979 period, fifteen films were released, with the remaining twenty coming between 1980 and 1990. This increase reveals not only a growing popular fascination with Hitler, but also a tendency to use the Führer as a sign for demonic evil. These representations are broken into three categories (1) prominent; (2) satirical; (3) contextualizing which are then analyzed according to whether a representation is demonizing or humanizing. Out of these thirty-five films, twenty-three can be labeled as demonizing and nine as humanizing, and there are three films that cannot be appropriately located in either category. In the 1968 to 1979 period, four films employed prominent Hitler representations, five films satirized Hitler, with six contextualizing films. The 1980s played host to five prominent representations, six satires, and nine contextualizing films. In total, there are nine prominent representations, eleven satires and fifteen contextualizing films. Arguing that prominent representations are the most influential, this study argues that the 1968 to 1979 period formed and shaped the sign of a demonic Führer, and its acceptance is demonstrated by films released between1980 and 1990. However, the appearance of two prominent films in the 1980s which humanized Hitler is significant, for these two films hint at the beginnings of a breakdown in the hegemony of the Hitler sign. The cinematic demonization of Hitler is accomplished in a variety of ways, all of which portray the National Socialist leader as an abstract figure outside of human behaviour and comprehension. Scholarly history is also shown to have contributed to this mythologizing, as the survival myth and myth of the last ten days have their origins in historiography. However, since the 1970s film has arguably overtaken historiography in shaping popular conceptions of the National Socialist leader. In addition to pointing out the connections between film and historiography, this study also suggests other political, philosophical, and cultural reasons for the demonization of Adolf Hitler.

Adam von Trott zu Solz was a participant in the German resistance to Hitler and to the National Socialist government. This thesis will describe his early life, his education and his political formation. Trott's foreign policy initiatives in England and his efforts to reactivate plans for a coup d'etat during the summer of 1939 will be examined.

Kurt Gerstein entered the Waffen-SS in 1941 with the intention of working against the Nazi regime from the inside. Despite being required to participate in some of the criminal activities of the SS, Gerstein believed he could be most effective for the resistance if he remained in the SS. This thesis examines the evidence presented in and the results of three separate legal proceedings (a criminal trial, a Denazification hearing and a rehabilitation and compensation case) which took place in the 24 years following Gerstein's death in 1945. Each of the three proceedings was brought about for a different legal purpose, and therefore involved different laws and standards for judgment. However, all of the proceedings dealt with the problem of balancing the incriminating nature of Gerstein's means of resistance against what he had hoped to accomplish, or did accomplish, from that position.

This thesis examines the attempts made by Carl Goerdeler, Ludwig Beck, Ernst von Weizsacker and Adam von Trott zu Solz to obtain the support of the British government in their effort to overthrow the Nazi regime between 1937 and 1940. The circumstances surrounding each mission are detailed, including the degree of readiness on the part of the German opposition for a coup d'etat and the particular form of support sought from the British to increase the chance of success in each case. Consideration is given to the factors which conditioned the British reaction to the resistance emissaries, including the British foreign policy imperatives of the moment, important events in European relations and the attitude and degree of influence wielded by the statesmen to whom the German resistance emissaries addressed themselves.

The purpose of this study is to examine four Swedish newspapers' views on the Nazi regime in Germany during the 1930's, and examine what information the Swedish public received through their reporting about the Berlin Olympics in 1936. The survey method of the study examines four Swedish newspapers with different political views, and how they described the Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany in 1936 during the Nazi Germany regime.   The theoretical perspective used in the study is the agenda setting theory, where the focus is on how the Olympic Games were depicted in the Swedish press against the agenda setting theory.   The results show the difference in reporting about the Berlin Olympics, based on the newspaper's views of the Nazi Germany regime. Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet show a positive attitude toward Nazi Germany, while Ny Dag shows great displeasure toward the Nazi Germany regime. Arbetet shows, like Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet, a relatively positive attitude toward Nazi Germany, even though the newspaper sometimes expressed criticism directed against Hitler and his regime.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

The study is a qualitative textual analysis comparing how two newspapers fromSmåland reacted to Nazi Germany during the interwar period. The purpose of the studyis to illustrate how newspapers' political orientation may influence its content. Theexamined material is limited to letters to the editor, editorials and columns. The twopapers are of different political orientations, Smålänningen is bourgeois andKronobergaren is social democratic. The theoretical basis is founded in Klas Åmarksperspective on Sweden's position in the war, the so-called small state realistic paradigmand the moral perspective, as well all Kosellecks theory about the written word. Theresults of the study shows that what’s written in the editorials, columns and letterswidely differ depending on witch political orientation it has. The social democraticnewspaper, Kronobergaren, had a strong anti-Nazi attitude and wrote a lot about theNazis and Germany. There are many texts that ridicule and criticize Hitler and theNazis. The bourgeois newspaper Smålänningen had significantly fewer textscommenting the Nazi-Germany and their content is often contradictory. Some of thetexts are strongly anti-Nazi, some give their support to Germany and proclaimunderstanding of its actions. Kronobergaren is deeply sympathetic to the Jews andSmålänningen has an anti-Semitic tone in many of their texts. There are also similaritiesbetween the two papers, its joint condemnation of war and the recognition of its terribleconsequences. The study in many ways confirms the previous research available on thesubject.

Under the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-1945) a calculated killing of chronic “mentally ill” patients took place that was part of a large biopolitical program using well-established, contemporary scientific standards on the understanding of eugenics. Nearly 300,000 patients were assassinated during this period. Nurses executed this program through their everyday practice. However, suspicions have been raised that psychiatric patients were already assassinated before and after the Nazi regime, suggesting that the motives for these killings must be investigated within psychiatric practice itself. My research aims to highlight the mechanisms and scientific discourses in place that allowed nurses to perceive patients as unworthy of life, and thus able to be killed. Using Foucauldian concepts of “biopower” and “State racism,” this discourse analysis is carried out on several levels. First, it analyzes nursing notes in one specific patient record and interprets them in relation to the kinds of scientific discourses that are identified, for example, in nursing journals between 1900 and 1945. Second, it argues that records are not static but rather produce certain effects; they are “performative” because they are active agents. Psychiatry, with its need to make patients completely visible and its desire to maintain its dominance in the psychiatric field, requires the utilization of writing in order to register everything that happens to individuals, everything they do and everything they talk about. Furthermore, writing enables nurses to pass along information from the “bottom-up,” and written documents allow all information to be accessible at any time. It is a method of centralizing information and of coordinating different levels within disciplinary systems. By following this approach it is possible to demonstrate that the production of meaning within nurses’ notes is not based on the intentionality of the writer but rather depends on discursive patterns constructed by contemporary scientific discourses. Using a form of “institutional ethnography,” the study analyzes documents as “inscriptions” that actively interven in interactions in institutions and that create a specific reality on their own accord. The question is not whether the reality represented within the documents is true, but rather how documents worked in institutions and what their effects were. Third, the study demonstrates how nurses were actively involved in the construction of patients’ identities and how these “documentary identities” led to the death of thousands of humans whose lives were considered to be “unworthy lives.” Documents are able to constitute the identities of psychiatric patients and, conversely, are able to deconstruct them. The result of de-subjectification was that “zones for the unliving” existed in psychiatric hospitals long before the Nazi regime and within these zones, patients were exposed to an increased risk of death. An analysis of the nursing notes highlights that nurses played a decisive role in constructing these “zones” and had an important strategic function in them. Psychiatric hospitals became spaces where patients were reduced to a “bare life;” these spaces were comparable with the concentration camps of the Holocaust. This analysis enables the integration of nursing practices under National Socialism into the history of modernity. Nursing under Nazism was not simply a relapse into barbarism; Nazi exclusionary practices were extreme variants of scientific, social, and political exclusionary practices that were already in place. Different types of power are identifiable in the Nazi regime, even those that Foucault called “technologies of the self” were demonstrated, for example, by the denunciation of “disabled persons” by nurses. Nurses themselves were able to employ techniques of power in the Nazi regime.

From 1938 to the outbreak of war in 1939, German opponents of Hitler made numerous contacts with the British government. While the information sent came from a variety of sources, most of the reports landed on the desk of Sir Robert Vansittart, the former Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office. His "internal-exile" to the position of Chief Diplomatic Advisor, as well as his personality conflicts with his successor, Sir Alexander Cadogan, and Lord Halifax, led to inefficient use of the information received from Germany. German warnings of Hitler's plans and ambitions, when listened to at all, were awkwardly and ineffectively incorporated into British foreign policy.